Guru's Grace - Maharaji and the Woman in the Hospital

Maharaji and the Woman in the Hospital

At a bhandara around 2001, I met a woman who had come for the first time. Some years ago a copy of Be Here Now had fallen into her hands, and after reading it she knew Maharaji was her guru.

She lived in the rural midwest and had never had contact with any of Maharaji’s devotees. As far as she knew American devotees were a small group of disconnected people. Lacking satsang, she honored Maharaji in her own way.

Some years later she developed brain cancer. Doctors at the hospital told her that odds of surviving the surgery were 50/50, perhaps less.

She was told to “get her house in order.” After surgery she remained in a drug-induced coma for several weeks in order to let her brain heal.

When she woke up a nurse came to her and asked her of which faith her father was. She told the nurse that both of her parents had been dead for many years.

The nurse asked, “So maybe he is a Rabbi or something like that?” The woman was baffled. As far as she knew, nobody other than her doctor even knew she was in the hospital.

Then nurse called over several physicians who described to the woman a visitor who’d been at her bedside after her surgery.

He was heavyset, bald and wore a “long white dress” and had a blanket over his shoulders.

The doctors told her that the strange man had sat by her side for several weeks holding her hand and seemed to be there twenty-four hours a day.

Only when woman had began to regain consciousness did the man with the blanket finally get up and walk away. She had a small picture of Maharaji copied from Be Here Now stashed away with her personal affects in the night table and when she showed it to the doctors, they all agreed that it the man in the photo was the same one that had sat by her side and held her hand.

A few years later while I was In India I heard that the woman’s cancer had come back. One of Maharajis old devotees was married to a lady who ran a naturopathic hospital in Delhi that was said to have success in treating “untreatable” illnesses. He said the lady was welcome to come to the hospital and get free treatment. A few days later several of Maharaji’s devotees pooled together enough money to buy the woman a round trip ticket to India. When I phoned her to offer her the ticket and the invitation to stay at the hospital, she quietly thanked me, but said she was ready to die. “I have Maharaji’s grace, and that’s enough.”

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